


can’t get gone enough

by Blacksneakers



Category: Dare Me (TV 2019), Dare Me - Megan Abbott
Genre: Complicated Relationships, F/F, Light Dom/sub, Pre-Canon, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:21:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23555974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blacksneakers/pseuds/Blacksneakers
Summary: Beth, Addy, and a stolen bottle of whiskey.
Relationships: Beth Cassidy/Addy Hanlon
Comments: 10
Kudos: 123





	can’t get gone enough

**Author's Note:**

> title from “drinkin’ too much” by sam hunt

The bottle sits on the table. Addy can’t stop staring at it. She can’t help it. They’ve gotten drunk plenty of times before, but always off of beer or wine coolers or cheap vodka. This is real. This is adult. This means something. It makes Addy feel excited, but also a little uncomfortable. Kind of like how she feels about Beth. Not that she’d ever admit that out loud.

Beth is completely unaware of Addy’s silent struggle. She’s in the middle of a story about something stupid her dad did, probably something to do with Tacy; Addy isn’t sure. She stopped listening about ten minutes ago, too wrapped up in her own thoughts and that fucking bottle. “And then he had the balls to say I’m the bratty one,” Beth continues. 

Addy looks at her for the first time in a minute. She’s pretty sure that when she first came over, Beth was wearing a shirt, but now she’s stripped down to a sports bra, and that’s almost as distracting as the bottle is. “When did you take your shirt off?” she asks, because she genuinely wants to know.

Beth gives her a withering look. “Addy, have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying?”

Addy feels embarrassed; worse, she feels found out somehow, like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar. She forces herself to look away from Beth’s chest. “Of course I was listening,” she lies. “Your dad’s a dick and has no balls. You know, the usual.” 

“Jesus, I’m sorry my life is so fucking boring to you,” Beth says, taking on the dramatic, martyred tone that Addy knows all too well. “I guess I’ll just shut up then.” She folds her arms across her chest. 

Addy rolls her eyes. “You’re not boring,” she says. “I just didn’t come here to listen to you bitch about your dad. I thought we were gonna, like, have fun.” She gestures vaguely in the direction of the bottle. When she does, Beth noticeably brightens, just like Addy knew she would. Beth doesn’t love anything more than she loves a challenge, especially when it comes from Addy. 

“Alright,” Beth says, taking the bottle by the neck and pulling it onto the couch. “If you’re thirsty”—she gives Addy a knowing look, and Addy wishes for the millionth time that she would just put a fucking shirt on— “then let’s drink.” She pours shots for both of them; the minute Addy brings the glass to her lips, she knows she’s made a huge mistake. Whiskey isn’t beer, and it isn’t a wine cooler; it burns going down and then it burns coming back up. Beth takes her own shot like it’s nothing, and then she sits back with an amused smile and a glint in her eyes that can only be described as unsettling while Addy chokes and gags and spits whiskey all over her sweatshirt. 

“God, Hanlon,” Beth says as soon as Addy regains whatever modicum of composure she has left, “if I knew you would do that I would have given you a glass of milk instead.” 

Addy wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and then uses the same hand to flip Beth off. “You suck,” she says. “It just went down the wrong way, that’s all. I wasn’t ready for it.”

“It’s okay to admit you can’t handle it,” Beth tells her. “Not everyone can. It’s okay to be a pussy sometimes.” 

“I can handle anything,” says Addy. She knows Beth is pissing her off on purpose, dragging her closer to the edge; that’s how they work. That’s how they’ve always worked. And Addy is letting it happen, like always. Plenty of people, including her mom, have called her a pushover. They tell her that she needs to stop letting Beth walk all over her. But they don’t know what it’s really like. Addy knows Beth needs her, needs someone to boss around as much as Addy needs Beth to tell her what to do. Sometimes when Beth is pushing her, Addy can feel herself settling into it, liking it, wanting to ask for more. The other week they were messing around in the locker room after practice and Beth shoved her against a locker from behind. Addy knows she did it as a joke, but she hasn’t stopped thinking about it since, imagining how it would have felt if Beth had kept her pinned there, maybe by her wrists.

Sometimes Addy’s mom asks her if she’s ever thought about getting a boyfriend. There have been boys, but deep down, Addy knows that she’s never thought about any of them as much as she thinks about Beth. That probably means something, but right now, all that matters to Addy is proving to Beth that she can handle doing shots of grown-up liquor without pussying out.

She looks Beth dead in the eyes and takes a second shot. It still doesn’t feel or taste good, but that’s not the point. It never was. Beth doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, maybe doesn’t even breathe as Addy swallows and sets down her glass. “See,” Addy says. “Not a pussy.” 

Beth smiles. “That shit’s gonna stain your shirt,” she tells Addy. “How are you gonna explain that to your mom?”

Addy looks down, sees the blooming brown stain on her shirtfront. “Fuck.”

“You could just take it off. I could wash it for you.” Beth’s being way more accommodating than she usually is. At first Addy doesn’t know what the catch is, but the minute she starts taking off her sweatshirt she knows she’s giving Beth an excuse to stare, unabashedly, and Beth isn’t embarrassed the way Addy was before. Most of the time, Addy doesn’t think Beth even has the capacity to feel embarrassed the way she does.

After Beth comes back from the laundry room, liter of Coke in hand, they start drinking in earnest. The whiskey goes down much easier when it’s cut with something else, and soon enough Addy’s warm enough that she’s glad she took off her sweatshirt. Long after they hear Beth’s mom go to bed upstairs, they keep drinking; somehow, they both end up on the floor, legs tangled together, looking at the ceiling but mostly at each other. 

Beth takes a pull directly from the bottle, then looks at Addy. “Why do you always do what I tell you to do?” she asks.

“What? That’s not true.”

“Are you scared of me?”

Addy laughs. “You’re my best friend. Don’t be dumb.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Addy runs her sock up and down Beth’s shin. “What do you want me to say? Will it make you feel better if I tell you I am?” She takes on the tone she and Beth usually use to make fun of Tacy, high pitched and lisping: “Oh Beth, I’m so scared, every time I look at you I piss my fucking pants.”

Beth pulls away from Addy and sits up, clearly unamused. “Cut it out. I’m trying to be serious.” 

Addy leans toward her, tries to settle her face into something at least vaguely resembling seriousness, and puts her hand on Beth’s thigh. “Seriously? I’m not scared of you. I promise. And you’ve never made me do anything I didn’t already want to do.” 

Beth relaxes slightly. “Did you know the freshmen on the squad are scared of you?”

“That’s not true. I don’t even talk to them, why would they be scared of me?”

Beth shrugs. “It’s just, like, a vibe you have, I guess.” 

“A vibe?” Addy scoffs. “I don’t even know what that means.” She thinks for a moment, then asks, “Are you scared of me?” She thinks she knows the answer she’ll get; after all, Beth isn’t scared of anything. She does whatever she wants, whenever she wants. If she wants to skip school, or flirt with men old enough to be her dad, or get a tongue piercing from someone’s cousin in the lot behind the old factory, or drink expensive alcohol in her mom’s basement with her top off, then she does it. Addy and everybody else and probably even God know that she’s the hottest girl in every room she walks into, and she knows that they all know. What could she possibly have to be afraid of? 

But when Addy looks at her now, she doesn’t look fearless at all. 

Addy repeats the question: “Beth, are you scared of me?”

Beth shakes off whatever weirdness there was before, then gives Addy the sharklike grin she usually reserves for someone she’s trying very hard to piss off. “Yeah,” she says. “I’m soo scared, Addy. I’m fucking terrified. Me and all the freshmen, we just sit around talking about how we’re scared you’re gonna beat us up if we look at you funny.” She rolls on top of Addy and traps her wrists above her head. “Are you gonna beat me up, Addy? Are you gonna scare me now?”

Addy feels completely off-kilter now; it would be so easy to push Beth off of her, tell her to stop being fucking weird, but she doesn’t. She just lies there, the basement rug scratching against her bare arms. “You know you’re the only one of us who’s actually beaten anyone up,” she says, hating how breathy and uncertain her voice sounds.

Beth shifts on top of her. “We both know that’s not true,” she says. “Remember Tim Pasternak? In third grade? He had that black eye for like two weeks.” 

Addy does remember, even though she didn’t until Beth brought it up. She remembers Tim making fun of Beth for having “big teeth,” she remembers punching him so hard her knuckles were bruised afterward, and most of all, she remembers Beth looking at her like she was her favorite person in the whole world.

“Whatever,” Addy says. “Tim was a moron. You don’t have big teeth.”

Beth smiles and climbs off of Addy, letting go of her wrists. Addy tries not to feel disappointed at the loss of contact. “I didn’t know you were an authority on teeth size,” Beth says, getting back on the couch.

Addy follows her. “I’m not,” she says. “But they can’t be too big, or they wouldn’t all fit in your mouth. And they’re all in there, so…”

“Yeah, they sure are,” Beth says, laughing. “And now you’ve officially stopped making sense, so we should go to bed.”

They stumble upstairs and collapse into Beth’s bed, their discarded shot glasses and nearly-empty whiskey bottle left sitting on the card table in the basement. After Beth turns off the lights, when Addy’s sure she’s asleep, she whispers into the darkness, “I’m not scared of you, I just really like how it feels when you get on top of me.” 

Beth sits up; she’s obviously been awake the whole time. “What did you just say?” 

Addy doesn’t know how to respond. She immediately regrets saying anything at all. “I didn’t say anything,” she says. “Go to sleep.” It’s not a big deal, she tells herself. They’re drunk, it’s late, Beth probably won’t remember in the morning. But just to be safe, she decides not to drink alone with Beth anymore. As long as she can do that, what could possibly go wrong? She just needs to be smart, and make good decisions, like her mom is always reminding her to, and everything will work out just fine.


End file.
